Enterprise Mainframe Spending Expected to Increase Alongside Public Cloud Adoption, ISG Study Finds
Survey of global decision-makers finds conflicting enterprise demands are keeping organizations on mainframes
The new ISG Market Lens™ Mainframe and Mainframe as a Service (MFaaS) Study finds one-third of large enterprises expect to upgrade existing mainframe processors or storage, 40 percent expect to increase capacity for traditional mainframes, and one in six expect to purchase a new mainframe over the next three years.
“Mainframes remain important in large enterprises, as organizations strategically balance between mainframe, MFaaS offerings and public cloud,” said
The ISG study was conducted in
“Mainframe demand is being fueled by enterprises’ inability to decommission their legacy infrastructure, often due to conflicting enterprise demands such as the adoption of AI, while others are prioritizing data security and resiliency,” said
Over the past three years, nearly 60 percent of enterprises have migrated some applications to the cloud, and over 40 percent have migrated to MFaaS, the study found. MFaaS is often viewed as a lower-cost solution that offers the flexibility and interoperability associated with public cloud with fewer migration and security challenges. It’s also a potential solution to mainframe talent challenges as those with traditional skills retire from the talent pool.
Top enterprise mainframe priorities are cost optimization, retiring legacy applications and infrastructure, adding AI capabilities and information security, but of these, the study found only security is rated as performing well. Fifty-four percent of respondents say information security on their current mainframe or MFaaS is performing better than peer organizations, while cost reduction (rated better than peer companies by 36 percent of respondents), AI (29 percent) and legacy retirement (31 percent) are all struggling to keep pace.
In addition, nearly a third of enterprises say accessing mainframe skills and talent is a challenge, as early retirement reduces staff availability and new employees are less likely to know legacy programming languages. Nearly all respondents were using managed service providers to support mainframe modernization and operations or MFaaS services.
“The competing priorities and challenges surrounding mainframes will drive enterprise demand for mainframe modernization services as companies turn to providers to help them get the full value from existing investments,” Dornan said. “Providers will be expected to impact the bottom line through cost optimization and deliver the benefits of integration and interoperability with other systems and services, including cloud.”
ISG Market Lens™ buyer behavior studies combine findings from surveys of senior-level global executives with expert ISG research and analysis on market trends and strategic business initiatives. Recent studies explored AI, cloud, application development and maintenance, BPO, cybersecurity, global capability centers and sustainability.
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